Christian National Association

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Christian National Association
Zjednoczenie Chrześcijańsko-Narodowe
abbreviation ZChN
Party leader most recently Marian Papis
founding October 28, 1989
resolution January 27, 2010
Headquarters ulica Piotrkowska 133
PL-90-434 Łódź
Alignment National Conservatism ,
Catholic Fundamentalism
Website zchn.waw.pl

The Christian-National Association ( Polish: Zjednoczenie Chrześcijańsko-Narodowe , ZChN for short , also translated as Christian-National Union ) was a nationally conservative and clerical -minded political party in Poland that existed from 1989 to 2010 .

Political orientation

ZChN was a right-wing religious , nationalist and Christian conservative party. She called for an extensive dissolution of the separation of state and church as well as a prioritized anchoring of the Roman Catholic Church in the Polish state. Her program, which always referred to natural law , included the stringent ban on abortion , the reintroduction or later expansion of religious education in schools and kindergartens, and the ban on pornography, as well as the entire spectrum of Catholic social teaching . Therefore, ZChN called for tax advantages for large families and free access to education , less to increase equality of opportunity than for nationwide upbringing and values. ZChN advocated a strong nation state and increased internal security . As a decidedly anti-communist party, it called for former members of the PVAP and the state security organs to be excluded from public participation without exception . In terms of economic policy, ZChN campaigned for state protectionism in favor of local medium-sized and especially small businesses and supported the restitution efforts of the owners of Polish nationality who were expropriated after 1945 . On the other hand, she protested against the sale of state-owned companies to foreign investors.

history

The Christian-National Association was founded on October 28, 1989 from the merger of several regional associations and registered as a political party the following year. It stood in the tradition of the pre-war parties National Democracy and Christian Union of National Unity . In January 1991 she sent her chairman Wiesław Chrzanowski to the Bielecki cabinet as Minister of Justice. In the parliamentary elections in 1991 she was a member of the electoral list of the Catholic Election Action (Wyborcza Akcja Katolicka) and won 49 of the 460 MPs and 9 of the 100 Senatorial seats. As a result, she was a member of two government coalitions: from 1991 to 1992 she appointed ministers in the Olszewski cabinet and from 1992 to 1993 in the Suchocka cabinet . In addition, the party chairman Chrzanowski was Sejm Marshal from 1991 to 1993 .

On June 5, 1992, following a decision taken at the initiative of ZChN, Interior Minister and ZChN member Antoni Macierewicz published a list of the politicians supposedly cooperating with the former SB security service . In addition to the President Lech Wałęsa , it also contained the name of the party leader and Sejm Marshal Chrzanowski. As a result, the Olszewski cabinet collapsed. On July 19, 1992 Macierewicz was expelled from the party. Most of the people accused of collaboration were not acquitted of the allegations until years later.

In the elections in 1993, for the first time a restrictive clause was in the amount of 5% of the votes cast for parties and 8% for joint election lists of several parties, missed ZChN as a member of the list Catholic Election Committee "Fatherland" (Katolicki Komitet wyborczy "Ojczyzna") to Moved into the House of Commons ( Sejm ) and gained only one direct seat in the Senate . In the 1995 presidential election , under the new chairman Ryszard Czarnecki , ZChN initially supported the Christian Democratic National Bank President Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz in order to make the election recommendation for the official Wałęsa shortly before the election.

The re-entry into the Sejm with 25 mandates for ZChN succeeded in the 1997 election from the joint list of right-wing parties Electoral Action Solidarność (AWS) , at the same time the party introduced three representatives to the Senate. She supported the Buzek cabinet during this legislative period . Their profile became more moderate overall, in particular they now agreed to a restricted European integration . In 1999, however, a group of MPs led by Jan Łopuszański left the party to protest against the government's pro-European policies and the regional reform . The ZChN's legislative initiative to ban pornographic writings in 2000 failed, but the discussion that took place in this context made the general public aware of the party again.

Bad polls from the AWS coalition and internal conflicts contributed to the fact that around 2000–2001 numerous MPs and functionaries of the ZChN transferred to the newly founded parties such as Law and Justice and the League of Polish Families . Due to this fact and the fact that it failed to enter parliament in 2001 with the AWS election proposal, ZChN became a largely politically insignificant small party . Recent notable successes it achieved in the local elections in 2002, when in the big cities Łódź ( Jerzy Kropiwnicki ) and Bialystok (Ryszard Tur) their representatives in a direct vote for mayor were elected (Mayor).

The collapse in membership numbers and a lack of government funding led to financial difficulties for the party in 2002 and, after the report was not accepted, was struck from the party register. In the same year it was re-registered, only to be formally liquidated again in 2006 for the same reason. At the same time, it was continued as a registered association. Even the recent re-establishment of the Party in 2008 succeeded no lasting success, because in January 2010, she was the absence of verifiable accountability report final ex officio erased from the register.

Former ZChN activists are now represented in the broad spectrum of political center and right-wing parties, in addition to Law and Justice (Antoni Macierewicz, Ryszard Czarnecki), Prawica Rzeczypospolitej ( Marek Jurek ) and Solidarna Polska ( Jacek Kurski ) also in the Platforma Obywatelska ( Stefan Niesiołowski , Michał Kamiński ).

Party leader

  • Wiesław Chrzanowski

  • Ryszard Czarnecki

  • Stanislaw Zając

  • Jerzy Kropiwnicki

Social influence

Several postulates of the Christian National Association were implemented in Polish legislation, such as the ban on abortion (which, however, was introduced in a weakened version), religious instruction in schools and kindergartens, and the Concordat and the equality of church-Catholic marriage with civil marriage . In contrast, the ZChN's economic policy aimed at protectionism largely failed .

With its radical demeanor, the Christian-National Association stood out from half a dozen of the nationalist and Christian-democratic parties represented in parliament from 1991 to 1993. It became widely known as the symbol of Catholic fundamentalism . In 1992 the satire-punk band around the songwriter and later politician Paweł Kukiz Piersi (The Breasts) published the song "ZChN zbliża się" ("ZChN is approaching"). The text of the song, however, addressed the greed and arrogance of the Catholic clergy , i.e. the social conditions supposedly preferred by the party and not the party itself.

The high level of awareness of the party in the 1990s meant that the noun ZChN-owiec ( e.g. ZChNler) found its way into dictionaries as a casual designation for a ZChN member.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b ZChN przestaje istnieć . In: Newsweek .pl , January 30, 2010
  2. ↑ a b Nikolaus Piper : Two steps forward, one backward . In: Die Zeit , March 26, 1993.
  3. ↑ Dieter Segert, Csilla Machos: Parties in Eastern Europe: Context and Actors . Opladen, 1995, ISBN 3-531-12774-8
    Inka Jörs: Post-socialist parties: Polish SLD and East German PDS in comparison . Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-15119-9
    German-Polish Society Brandenburg: Party landscape in Poland ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive )     Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. European Parliament: MEPs website by Ryszard Czarnecki and Marek Jurek     @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dpg-brandenburg.de
  4. ↑ Sabine Kropp [Ed.]: Coalitions in Western and Eastern Europe . Opladen 2002, ISBN 3-8100-3176-3
  5. ↑ Klaus Ziemer : The political system of Poland. An introduction. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, p. 193.
  6. ^ Paweł Sawicki: Bóg dał ci rock and rolla. In: tygodnik.com.pl. Retrieved July 13, 2015 (Polish).
  7. ↑ ZChN-owiec . In: Dictionary of the Polish Language of the PWN